Tata is located in the valley between theGerecse Mountains andVértes Mountains, some 70 km (43 mi) fromBudapest, the Hungarian capital city. By virtue of its location, it is a railway and road junction.Motorway M1 (E60, E75) fromVienna to Budapest passes through the outer city limits, and the railway line Budapest–Vienna goes through the city.
Tata's climate is classified asoceanic climate (KöppenCfb). The annual average temperature is 10.9 °C (51.6 °F), the hottest month in July is 21.4 °C (70.5 °F), and the coldest month is 0.0 °C (32.0 °F) in January. The annual precipitation is 589.4 millimetres (23.20 in), of which July is the wettest with 69.6 millimetres (2.74 in), while February is the driest with only 30.6 millimetres (1.20 in). The extreme temperature throughout the year ranged from −22.7 °C (−8.9 °F) on December 28, 1996 to 39.1 °C (102.4 °F) on August 8, 2013.
The area has been inhabited since prehistoric times; archaeological findings date back to 50,000 BCE.[citation needed] Later it was aRoman settlement.[citation needed]
In 1526 when the disastrous battle with the Turks happened andLouis II died in the battlefield, CountGyörgy Cseszneky was thecastellan of the Castle Tata. The plundering Ottoman army ransacked the area, but Cseszneky successfully defended the castle.
In 1727, Count József Esterházy bought Tata and the surrounding villages. The town prospered, in 1765 it already had asecondary school.
According to the article in thePallas Lexicon about Tata in 1851, the town was a "pretty and developing village in the Tata district of Komárom comitatus; 895 buildings, 6925 mostly Hungarian residents (3633 Roman Catholics, 2518 Lutherans and 673 Israelites), centre of the district, with secondary school, railway station, post office. Tata and the adjoining village Tóváros (4257 residents) are built around a large lake, Tata on the hillside, and Tóváros on the plain. Between them, there are the Esterházy mansion and an old castle with an archive and a gallery which included a painting of Leonardo da Vinci. The theatre was built in 1889. The mansion is surrounded by the English garden (140 hectares)."[8]
In 1938, the village of Tóváros was annexed to Tata. So thus, the city was renamedTatatóváros but only for a short while; one year later, it was named Tata again.
^Márki, Sándor (1899).A longobárdok hazánkban [The Langobards in our homeland](PDF) (in Hungarian). Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca): Ajtai Kovách Albert Magyar Polgár Könyvnyomdája. p. 15.